Dragon Age, Griffon Time
by Golden Naginata
Summary: Origins AU. Did all the griffons die out two hundred years ago? Jennis and her owl griffon Snow would beg to differ. The Grey Wardens could use a griffon, Jennis could use some books on griffon biology, and Snow's reached an age when she needs to find a mate. The solution? Working together. Swooping can be fun...
1. Prologue

Dragon Age: Origins, all of its characters, locations and lore belong to Bioware and not to me. Jennis and Snow belong to me, however.

Ten Years Ago:

The eggs needed turning every few hours lest the heat of the springs cook first the whites and then the developing dragonlings inside, and it was the young girls of Haven who were chosen for that task. Too young to be Initiated into the Cult of Andraste Reborn as yet, this was by way of an apprenticeship before their first Communion, the first taste of the blood of Her children…

There were always bowls of stinking, bloody meat scraps at hand should an egg hatch, ready to sate the new-born's starving belly, although the girls were supposed to call an Acolyte should one of the ovoids begin rocking and cracking. Sometimes a hatching happened too quickly, though, and that was what happened one afternoon when Jennis was on duty.

She was turning eggs on the other side of the cavern, wondering what that little sound was—a tic-tic-tic, irregular but insistent. Sometimes there were long pauses before the determined chipping started up again. It sounded nothing at all like a dragonling hatching. Dragonlings hatched very quickly and angrily, not to mention loudly, nearly exploding out of their shells, screaming their way into the world. This egg hatched almost silently as bits of shell flaked away from it, and not until a little squawk gasped out of it did Jennis look over and realize what was going on, more from the gap in the row of eggs than anything else.

She hurried over, calling, "Sir? Sir!" and grabbing at a bowl of meat along the way. But the creature rocking back and forth on its back was not a scaly, sleek dragonling, a miniature copy of its parent, but something slimy, misshapen, and grotesque. Instead of a small elegant head on a long and graceful neck, it had a huge, wobbling head on a short neck. Instead of bright scales, it had naked, goose-pimpled pink skin, practically transparent, over half its body. The other half had yellowish-grey hairs, plastered down with more slime.

Its eyes weren't open, if they even could open. Instead it had two dark blobs under its lids—and what were those flaps sealed down against its skull? Its wings, worst of all, had no membranes. It couldn't possibly fly.

All in all it was the weirdest, ugliest thing she had ever seen. And she'd been the time when her great-grandfather, who was senile, turned up for the Year's Turn feast in nothing but his hat, so she had something nearly as awful to compare it to.

The acolyte looked down at…it. "Ah. It happens sometimes. Don't bother feeding it; it'll die in a few hours no matter what you do. When something is that deformed outside, it's even worse inside."

"Won't Father Eirik want it for the Communing?" As small as it was, it had at least a little blood.

"This?" the acolyte scoffed. "What sort of power do you think that abortion could bestow? Leave it alone." Without bothering to see if she obeyed—obedience was pretty much a given among the people of Haven—he went back to his own duties.

Jennis looked at the…thing. It had managed to turn itself over and was wobbling on its unsteady stubbly legs. She might be wrong, but it seemed awfully strong and lively for something that was supposed to die no matter what. Yet it was so hideous—its front half didn't even match its back half, and what was that lump it had instead of a nose?—but it was pitiful too. And it was making those squeaks. She held out a strip of meat in front of its blind eyes, and it opened its mouth to gobble it, so greedy it almost choked.

"Careful," she whispered to it. "Not so fast." It ate and ate until its belly bulged out, then burped, flopped over, and fell asleep. Picking it up gingerly, she concealed it in a bowl, piling a layer of scraps over its body, and smuggled it out. There was a hollow tree she knew of which would do for a hiding place.

Yes, she was disobeying, but…in Haven, nobody had anything that was theirs, really. Not even themselves. Especially not themselves, once they had their Initiation and their first Communion. After that they belonged to Andraste. The changes she had seen in friends who had already gone through it—. But there was no refusing. There was either Initiation, or there was death.

Well, there was this creature here. Maybe it was ugly, maybe it would die, but it would be hers, and she would love it and care for it.


	2. First Impressions

Aedan Cousland finished buckling on his armor and stood up. "I'm heading up to Haven now," he announced. "Sten, Morrigan, with me. Alistair, Leiliana—guard the camp. Fang? Fang, where are you, boy?" He looked about for his Mabari hound, who appeared out of the bushes with a happy bark, and the four of them headed up the high, winding road toward the remote and obscure village which might perhaps yield some answers to the whereabouts of the scholar Brother Genitivi and a sacred artifact with purported healing powers, the Urn of Andraste.

Alistair's spirit was shadowed as he watched them go. Torn between offense at being left behind, as the goal was to obtain a cure for his foster-father, Arl Eamon, and relief that he did not currently have to endure Cousland's presence, he set up the campsite, going through the motions without thinking much about it. Even before the Joining ceremony, Cousland had seemed to do everything he could to put the two of them at odds with each other, and since then, it had all been jibes and jeers as the only other Grey Warden in Fereldan had gone out of his way to show how ruthless and tough he could be. Yes, the motto of the Wardens was 'whatever it took' to end the blight, but whenever there was a choice to be made, Cousland erred on the side of cruelty, and the presence of Morrigan and Sten only brought more of it out of him.

Alistair could only blame himself. If he had not deferred to his junior Warden, if he had not gladly yielded leadership up to him—then Lady Isolde would still be alive. When Alistair's guardian, more than that, his foster-father woke, it would be to find his wife dead and his son earmarked for the Circle. That was, if Arl Eamon woke up at all. He paused as he set stones for the firepit. The Blight…blighted the world in more ways than the obvious.

Across the camp, Bodahn, the merchant who had attached himself and his son to their party, looked up and smiled. Alistair glanced in the direction the dwarf was looking to see a human woman approaching, a pair of saddlebags slung over her shoulder.

"Miss Jennis, welcome! Good to see you safe and sound," Bodahn boomed at her.

"I am very glad to see you and Sandal too," she replied. "There have been refugees and bandits about from places east of here with tales of monsters and destruction. How true are these reports?" While she asked, she unbuckled the saddlebags and began emptying them on the back of the merchant's wagon.

"Every bit of them and more, I fear. There's the civil war and blight and all matter else going on…"

Interested, Alistair drew nearer. She was, he thought, about his age, and while she had neither Morrigan's icy severe beauty or Leliana's opulent, pouty prettiness, she looked…nice. Her mouth looked like it smiled a lot, her hair was tidy enough but not fussed over. Her eyes were very fine, and he liked the way they crinkled up a little at the corners when she smiled. Also, rather than a gown or armor, she wore a reddish brown wool jacket over reinforced leather breeches which showed off a shapely backside, and the breeches were worn and patched enough to underscore that they were practical and not chosen to display said backside.

That she had one of Fereldan's rare horses somewhere about was obvious from both the reinforced breeches and the saddle bags, which were yielding up a lot of things like mysterious vellum packets, waxed cloth pouches, little earthenware pots stoppered with wood plugs and sealed with wax, animals pelts and bundles of dried twigs.

However, as he was causally approaching and thinking about what to say to this 'Miss Jennis', the smell hit him in the face. Maker's breath! He knew women had…bodily functions just like men, (not to mention a few men didn't) and those bodily functions must naturally include flatulence, but she smelled as though she had been living on eggs and beans for the last month. Despite this, he stepped upwind to listen in.

"So what have you got?" Bodahn rubbed his hands together. "Other than the sulfur salts, which I can already tell you've got in quantity and I'll take all of it and then some any day."

"Hesperidial salts, silver of vixonite, ichor of somnia, nitre salts, Hypatia's clove, elfroot and deathroot, of course, some wolf pelts, rabbit pelts, spider venom extract and…" she reached down the front of her blouse to bring out a small leather pouch, opening it up to tip out several chunks of white quartz veined throughout with gold matrix. "these."

"And aren't they just the prettiest things," Bodahn stirred the stones with a stout finger. "But—I'm a sight too honest for my own good. Things are bad right now. Bad and getting worse. Ordinarily I'd take these in a flash, sell them to some fancy jeweler in Denerim or someplace, but the fact is, times are too bad for people to go spending money on baubles. Unless you're hurting that bad for money, put these away until I or somebody else can pay you what they're worth."

"I appreciate that," she said, putting the chunks away again. "Now what do _you_ have?" After some negotiation, the woman left, her saddlebags considerably flatter.

Alistair waited a few minutes before he wandered over to negotiate with the dwarf over some extra gear he had picked up along the way, noticing that the used egg and bean smell had transferred in a small way to the wagon. "By the way—who was that you were bargaining with before?" he asked, midway through a conversation about the fire bolts he had no use for.

"Jennis?" the dwarf asked, with a brightness to his eye that said Alistair wasn't fooling anyone. "Been coming around to trade for at least five years now, whenever we're in the area. She's a mineralogist, in an informal way, you might say, among other things. Bit of an alchemist, too, I think. See, there's a lot of hot springs around here, and when they come bubbling up, the water's often full of minerals and smells like privy gas. (Which accounts for why you're wrinkling your nose, by the way.) She extracts them or distills them, I don't know just what, and sells them. Always first quality and pure, no cutting with trash to make weight. She lives around here, somewhere or other."

"Hot springs all around here, hmmm?" Alistair seized on that part of it. It had been quite a while since his skin had come into contact with hot water. In the camp, he, like everyone else, made do with sponge baths involving a bucket of cold water and the cleanest piece of cloth they could find. The more he thought about it, the more attractive an idea it became, something to think of besides how much he disliked Cousland's choices and the disgust he felt toward his actions. A bath. A long, hot leisurely bath. He might even be able to wash some of his smallclothes while he was at it. Therefore, after he finished laying stones for the campfire, he got his soiled linens and headed for the hills, first asking Leliana if she wanted to join him. As it happened, she was meditating, so she shushed him, as people so often did, and he went on alone.

It wasn't long before he found a hot spring by following his nose, although it took some scrambling up over a rise and down over rocks before he could get to it. By then it had started to snow lightly, but the snow vanished when it touched the warmth rising from the water. It was quite a picturesque spot, actually, a natural grotto. Beautiful rock formations ringed a good sized pond, almost a lake. The very center of it was a vivid blue, shading outward through turquoise to green, from green to yellow, yellow to orange and orange to an ochre-red. Pulling off a glove, he tested the water. Warm, but not hot, at least at the edges, and not acidic or caustic. Good enough. It might stink like a giant expulsion of gas, but it was hot water he didn't have to haul, heat or pay for.

First things first. He emptied his pack and washed his dirty laundry, draping the articles over the rocks to dry before divesting himself of the rest of his armor, stripping down to his smallclothes. The colors of the water were caused by some kind of waterweed, soft and squishy between his toes as he waded in. The water got warmer as he went deeper.

He was calf-deep—the water got warmer still as he went—and just about to dive in that invitingly blue center when a voice, a _female_ voice, a _young_ female voice called out, "Don't!"

"Aaah!" He sat down abruptly, as much out of panic at being caught almost naked by a girl as out of surprise.

"Are you all right?" She appeared in his field of vision. It was, of course, the mineralogist Jennis, wearing an expression of concern.

"Quite, thank you. I didn't need that tailbone for anything. What was the matter?" he tried to recover as best he could. At least the water came up above his waist while he was sitting down, providing him with some modesty.

"If you dove out in the center, you'd boil yourself alive," she explained. "If you don't go out further than the green goes, you'll be okay. Better to stick to yellow, though."

He was sitting in the yellow where he was, and it was plenty warm enough. "Ah. Thank you. Um. You're Jennis, right? I saw you talking to Bodahn at our camp. I'm Alistair."

"Pleased to meet you, " She skirted the edges of the pond to extend a hand to him.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," he gestured to the water, his lower regions, and his general lack of clothing. "How long were you—? On second thought, never mind. I'm sorry if I'm intruding—."

She had shed the heavy jacket and was wearing a thin, sleeveless singlet, not to mention a smile playing around her mouth.

"It's all right," she assured him. "Nobody owns the land around here. No one I know of, anyway. You've as much right to use this as anyone. If you have to relieve yourself, though, please don't do it in the water. I don't know what it would do to the minerals."

"I can assure you the thought never crossed my mind." He watched her as she dipped up a bucket of water and walked just out of sight behind a rock. "So you mine the springs for minerals, Bodahn said. What do people buy them for? I mean, what do they do with them?"

"Well, the sulfur salts make a good preservative for food. You know how dried apricots go all shriveled and dark until you can't tell if you're buying fruit or dried ears?" she called from behind the rock.

"Is that why the last pound I bought tasted like earwax?" he countered.

She laughed. He liked the sound of her laugh. It wasn't contemptuous or gurgly (no names mentioned). "Good one. Well, if you dust food with a little of the sulfur salts, it stays moist and colorful and keeps better. It's good for dressing wounds, keeps them from going septic, and if you mix it with nitre salts and powdered charcoal it makes the best explosive I know of." She reappeared to fill the bucket again.

"And you know a lot about explosives, do you?" he asked. Another good thing about sitting in hot, steamy water; it provided an excuse for a red, flushed face.

"I like trying things out to see what will happen. Mind you, I sometimes don't have eyebrows for months, but it's a small price to pay for satisfying my curiosity." She came back for another bucket, and that was when all hell broke loose. A bear appeared over the ridge, charging headlong straight for them.

His reflexes took over, propelling him out of the water and for his sword. Another moment and he knocked Jennis down, taking a protective stance over her. Then he realized the bear was not running toward them but away from something even larger that was chasing it.

His eyes saw it and cut the information into chunks his brain could process before sending it along. Huge. White. Tawny gold. Claws. Beak! Wings. Paws. Tail. He raised his sword to fend it off, but Jennis grabbed his ankle and yanked, sending the two of them rolling. He wound up on top, breathing hard.

"That. Is. That is… That's a griffon," he choked out. "It's a _real_ griffon."

Furious yellow eyes regarded him, the pupils shrunk to slits, and its black tufted ears were laid back along its head. "Grrrrrrrrhssssss." came out of it, a sound full of menace.

"Yes, I know," Jennis said somewhere from under his chest. "And since she bit the head off the last man who had me down like this, I suggest you not make any sudden moves. Mind you, he was a bandit and I was kicking and screaming, but she's the protective sort anyway."

"It's—she's _your_ griffon," he stated. He could see leather straps disappearing into the snowy breast feathers, the edge of what must be a saddle on her neck.

"I'm just as much her human," she said. "Her name is Snow."

"She's beautiful," Alistair breathed in awe. Oddly, while she was definitely part lion, she looked more like she was part owl than part eagle. Were all the pictures wrong, or was she a different kind of griffon? Otherwise, one could hardly ask for a more noble and majestic creature. White and golden brown with touches of black, a curving, fierce looking beak-he found he was grinning from ear to ear.

"Yes, isn't she? By the way—when I said, don't make any sudden moves, I didn't mean don't move at _all_."

"Oh. I'm sorry. This is what they call a compromising position, isn't it?" They couldn't avoid all bodily contact as they untangled themselves and got up, but while Jennis's body did feel cushiony and natural against his, this was not a moment when noticing would be wise. Having an angry griffon hissing like a teakettle from a few feet away was better than a bucket of cold water.

* * *

TBC… By the way, if you look up pictures of newly hatched owlets, they really are weird and ugly looking just out of the shell.


	3. Getting Acquainted

_Holy Andraste, when I was praying for a handsome young male to enter our lives, I actually meant a handsome young male __**griffon**__, not a human…but thank You all the same_. Snow needed a mate more than Jennis did. Earlier that year, Snow had insisted on building a nest, which for a griffon mean not twigs and branches, but semiprecious stones and all the gold they had. She had even found a rock face with a vein of gold nuggets and chipped them out with her beak.

After the nest was built and lined with feathers and down, the griffon had laid an egg and tried to hatch it out. As she had never mated, the egg had no chick inside, and Snow grieved when it went rotten and broke (_only someone hardened to the stench of the springs could have born it.)_

What that underscored was Jennis's ignorance of how griffons grew and developed. For ten years, she had gotten by on common sense as far as caring for and feeding Snow was concerned, but there were limits to how far that would get them. How much larger might Snow become? What was her lifespan likely to be? How often might she lay eggs, and most of all, where were they to find a mate for her?

At the moment, however, their greatest problem was standing there in wet smallclothes which covered no more than a hand span of his body, brandishing a sword. "This might go better if you put the blade down and backed away from it," she told Alistair. _Ordinarily I wouldn't trust a human, but the way he's grinning, like Snow is a dream come true. I think…I think that for once this is someone who is on the inside exactly as he is on the outside_.

"Oh, right," he agreed, bending over and setting the longsword down with care. "And, uh, perhaps I should put something on as well."

"That couldn't hurt," she said, a little reluctantly. He was quite well-made but their conversation wasn't going to get very far if she kept getting distracted by embarrassment. _It's so hard to concentrate on his face and not__** look**__ at him below the neck_.

"Then I'll just, ah, go behind this rock here and put on my armor," he edged away. "You're not going to go flying away if I do that, are you? I have so many questions to ask."

"No," she said, "we won't." All the same, she went to Snow's side to smooth her hackles.

"Whuu izz ee?" Snow asked, ducking her head to nuzzle Jennis. (1)

"His name is Alistiar," she replied, soft and low into Snow's delicate ear. "I don't know, but he may turn out to be a friend, like the Dalish."

At a year old, Snow had begun to talk, at first just parroting what Jennis said, but soon it became clear that she was truly talking, not just mimicking. As she had a beak rather than lips, her words were sometimes distorted, but the sense was clear, at least to Jennis.

"Ai ken tok to eem?" Snow murmured back, closing her eyes and letting Jennis scratch her around her ear. (2)

"Once we're sure he is a friend, yes. Until then, it would be better to let him think you a dumb beast." Some people had a narrower definition of 'people' than others did, and even the best of humans might balk at extending personhood to a creature the length of a house. Those who referred to elves as 'knife-eared' and dwarves as 'grit-suckers' were apt to get upset when presented with a talking, thinking griffon.

A clashing of metal armor came from behind the rock. "What happened to the bear?" Alistair called out, sounding alarmed.

"It got away," Jennis called back.

"Eee _med _me luze et," Snow complained. "Mabee eee izz not a frend—Duu uuu want eem fur a maete? UUUr aigz wuul bee az my aigz, alwayz." _Human-like_ did not mean _human_; there were things which Snow must have come out of the egg knowing—no, things she was _convinced_ of. No amount of explaining would change her mind. (3)

"He would have to court me first. Now shush, he's coming out." she told the griffon. Raising a magical creature with human-like intelligence wasn't easy, Snow did not see things the same way a human would.

"Now—"Alistair reappeared from behind his rock, reached out, then hesitated. "Is it possible that I could I pet her? It won't seem quite real otherwise."

"Why don't you ask her?" Jennis countered, and stepped away.

"Ask her—? Ah. All right. It can't be that much different from talking to a Mabari. Lady Snow, you are the most wondrous and magnificent creature I have ever seen, and it would be a privilege to be allowed to stroke your plumage. May I have the honor?" He spoke caressingly, with a measure of awe in his voice, holding out his hand where she could sniff it.

Snow, in turn, drew her head up proudly. She loved being praised (_few people of any sort are immune to the charm of hearing nice things about themselves_). Suddenly dipping her neck, she nudged his hand up to her forehead.

"I'll bet you say that to all the girls," Jennis teased him.

"No, only the ones who can literally bite my head off. Although if you mean it figuratively, that does cover all the women I know, actually. Ah! She's so soft." Granted permission, he took advantage of it to scratch around her ears, tugging gently at the tufts.

"She likes being scratched under the chin, too," Jennis told him. "and between the wings—when she's not saddled, that is."

"I see," He nodded to the saddle. "I notice there are two sets of stirrups—is there someone else you go riding with?"

"No, it's just that I sit differently when we're flying than I do when we're on the ground," she replied.

Just then, Alistair found that spot right between Snow's jaw and ear that made her go boneless with pleasure, and she leaned into the knight, staggering him. "Whoa! I think I must be doing something right. What's that noise? Is she _purring_?" The sound was somewhere between the purr of an enormous cat and the coo of a dove, of all the incongruous possible sounds.

"Yes. Don't stop now, whatever you do. She'll be tetchy."

"I won't! Now, by the Maker," Alistair, asked, rubbing for all he was worth and looking very cheerful. "how is it possible there's a griffon here at all? Where did she come from, and how did you get her? They all died out two hundred years ago, after all."

"That's not what the Dalish say," Jennis replied. "I met a very old Dalish leader, many centuries old, and he told me griffons left human habitations because they were treated badly."

"The Dalish? You're friends with the Dalish? No, wait. I want to hear about how you found her first, so can we revisit the Dalish later?" Snow leaned harder against Alistair, staggering him. "If you're going to collapse on me, let me sit down first," he told her. "Remember how much bigger you are than I am." He did, and she went limp across his lap in a gold and white puddle of feathers and fur.

"Rubbing her eyebrow ridges is also good," Jennis said. She watched Snow swoon even harder, if such a thing were possible. Alistair's face had had tensions in it that smoothed out as he rubbed between the griffon's eyes, and he looked much younger for it. She could see what he must have looked like when he was a boy_. I don't think he could have been a very happy boy—and that, Andraste, is something I know about. Yes, I'll try trusting him_.

She sat down herself and began, "How much do you know about the village of Haven?"

"I know they have male priests there, they don't like outsiders, and they may be guarding the Urn of Andraste. How's that for a start?" he asked.

"It's where I got my start," Jennis replied. "They say they worship Andraste, but they don't. What they worship, what they spend their lives adoring and worshipping, is a High Dragon."

Griffon Speech Translations:

(1) "Who is he?"

(2) "I can talk to him?"

(3) "He made me lose it. Maybe he is not a friend. Do you want him for a mate? Your eggs would be as my eggs, always."


	4. Making Friends

Alistair settled down to listen with Snow draped over his lap. In this position, he could reach down under the saddle to rub between her wings, and the "UUUUuuuuuUUUUU" sigh he received suggested that this was a thoroughly acceptable gesture where she was concerned.

He marveled at the subtle variations in her feathers. Rather than a uniform shade of tawny gold, each feather had bars of darker color toward the end, the outer edge specked in black and white. The tuft at the end of her tail was not hair, surprisingly, but more feathers, very long and thin ones that fluttered in the least breeze. One of the most beautiful things about her, however, had to be the way that the bird half flowed into the cat half, gracefully and naturally. The great feather ruff down her front, white with delicate black specks, curved into a deep healthy leonine chest and slim, muscular hindquarters.

The girl, Jennis, half-smiled at the sight and began her tale in earnest. "I don't know when it began—many generations ago, I suspect—but a priest of our Chantry came across a dragon nest. Dragons are not very good at looking after their own young. Many more hatchlings die than live, in the wild. We're always coming across nests in the caves, and when the drakes don't bring back enough for the dragonlings to eat, they start eating each other and end up starving. In this case, the village took over caring for the dragon's brood. "

"The nests you've found, those would be the offspring of the offspring of the High Dragon, wouldn't they?" Alistair asked. "Perhaps they got so used to being taken care of by humans they forgot how to fend for themselves. After all, it happens to human nobles. First generation, mighty warriors. Second generation, fox hunters. Third generation, can't dress themselves."

She smiled appreciatively. "That's something I hadn't thought of. They _could_ have learned to be helpless from us."

"Wow. I thought of something first. That's a new one. But why would people bother to care about, not to mention care for, enormous scaly fire-breathing lizards that would gladly eat them if nothing else tastier were around?"

"Ah. It's been a long time since I lived among them. Say, would you like a cup of frostmint tea? I've got some brewed up, using snowmelt water, _ not_ water from the hot springs, since you were about to ask." She was obviously stalling while she thought of what to say, but so far she had been honest and open and he was not about to pass judgment.

"I—thank you. Yes. I would." he replied.

Jennis got up, stretching her firm and rounded limbs—He _had_ to notice. It simply came with being a man and young and interested in women. (Morrigan, for example, while well endowed and well aware of it, had spindly arms and legs, so much so that her right arm, on which she wore a long black sleeve, looked like a charred and shriveled twig.) Jennis went around the rocks and came back with a steaming jug and a couple of rough, unglazed cups. "There's sweet weed root in it too. It's hard to come by sugar or honey out here." She poured tea into the cups and held one out to him.

"Thank you, " He accepted the cup and sipped at it. It was quite good.

Jennis settled back down with her cup, sitting cross-legged. "By the way, what are you doing in the area? I'm guessing you're not simply a merchant's hired guard. Your armor is too good."

Well, that was fair enough. She had been forthcoming with him, up to a point, and he could do the same. "I'm not. You see, the Arl of Redcliffe lies at the point of death, and the Urn of Andraste is the only hope that he might be cured. I and several others are here to try and find it before it's too late. It might already be so, for all we know." he added gloomily.

"What is he suffering from?" Jennis asked.

"He was poisoned," Alistair told her, "by a blood mage."

"A blood mage?" She sat up very abruptly. "Someone from Haven?"

"No, not at all. A renegade Circle Mage. Why?" He remembered that when they began their hunt for the Urn, starting at Brother Genivisti's house in Denerim, they had been misdirected to an inn on the shores of Lake Calenhad. At the inn, no one had heard of Genivisti and when they had left, a group of cultists had attacked them. Among the cultists had been at least one mage.

"That question you asked, about why would people bother with dragons. It's a really good question, especially since the entire village is devoted to caring for the dragons. Three out of four of all the sheep and cattle they raise go to feed them. The answer is that the dragon lets them sacrifice some of the hatchlings for blood magic. There's a ceremony of initiation that everyone has to go through when they get old enough that makes people obedient and unquestioning, but they can't do it to you when you're still too young. It freezes you—freezes people's minds, I mean—at the age when they're initiated. You have to be capable enough to grow crops, tend cattle, make food and weave cloth, or the whole village would starve and freeze."

It seemed as though Jennis had been wanting to tell someone about this for a very long time. She went on. "When you are old enough, they take you up to the top of the mountain and prepare a cauldron with dragonling blood and a lot of other things—deathroot and lyrium potion are some things I know for sure go into it. Then the initiate has to shed some of their own blood into it, before they drink and the priests drink, but it's Andraste, their Andraste, who finishes the pot. Funnily enough," her voice got rather high and sharp, "for some reason when a priest's son goes up for his Initiation, instead of shedding his own blood, he has a pig's bladder full of some other blood up his sleeve. Priest's sons don't go all dull and obedient afterward, either."

"Let me guess. You ducked out before they ever got around to initiating _you_," Alistair guessed.

"You're right. I saw too many go through it, and how they changed afterward. I always meant to run off, but I wound up leaving a few years before they would have initiated me. You see, when I was still living among them—that was ten years ago now—I was tending the eggs one day when something unusual hatched out of one of them." Jennis settled down once more, looking happier again.

"What, you mean Snow?" He pointed to the half-asleep griffon. "Out of a _dragon_'s egg? How is that possible? I mean, for one thing, it's the_ front_ half that's bird, the back half is _cat. _You'd think they'd have litters of kittens or cubs, whatever you want to call them. For another, a dragon's egg, by any logic, should hatch out dragons."

"I know. There's only two things that could have happened. One is that some priest or villager found her egg somewhere, figured it was a wild dragon's, and brought it in, or else—," Jennis paused.

"Or else what?" Alistair asked, ceasing to stroke for a moment. Snow opened one eye to glare at him. "Sorry, sorry," he apologized, going back to rubbing under her chin.

"It really was a dragon's egg, and she was born of some magic. The acolyte said that sometimes the hatchlings were born deformed. Dragons eat some very strange things in small quantities—minerals, ores, stones, coins. They don't eat lyrium, but if you put something metal next to raw lyrium for too long, it's like washing red wool with white linens. The linens go pink, and the metal picks up something from the lyrium. Everybody knows what lyrium does to living things, especially if they have any magic."

"How do you know all that?" he asked.

"I told you, I like to tinker around and work out things. Also I read every book I can get my hands on."

"You do sound well educated for a girl from a small village with a notorious hatred for outsiders," Alistair mused. "So how did the dragon worshipping blood cultists take to having a griffon hatchling?"

"Oh, they never knew about her_. I_ didn't even know what she was at first. She was the strangest looking little cheeper when she was first hatched, all goose pimples and fuzz. Her eyes didn't open until two months went by. Up until then all she did was eat and sleep," Jennis smiled at the memory. He liked her dimples. He liked her whole face for that matter. "And then one day, when I was feeding her, her eyes opened, and she looked straight up at me. That was it, then. I just… fell in love with her."

TBC…


End file.
